Making useful things with people

A little context

I'm Mike. Here's the thread.

I’m Mike Hall, and I use just3ws online. I build software and communities, preserve the stories people tell about the work, and share what I’m learning along the way. I helped start Cloud Developers Group in 2009 and handled most of its initial setup. I was a lead co-founder of Software Craftsmanship McHenry County (SCMC), and built the Chicago Code Camp website from 2010 through 2012. Through UGtastic, later WHOIS Tech Community, I recorded more than 200 interviews. It is one continuing interview and community-history project across those names. A lot of my work has also been helping engineers grow. At Groupon, I built onboarding and training programs. Later, I created Geekfest@OMF and ran recurring peer-learning sessions for more than a year. I founded and led an OpenTelemetry Working Group from 2024 through 2025, helping establish observability practices and transition them into a dedicated, staffed capability. At Assembly, I led Coderwall’s move into open source. Today I create Phalanx Duel and the Panoramic View method, and make Ramblin’ & Amblin’. The videos are personal and still taking shape. I talk through software, systems, work, and ideas I’m trying to understand. I decide what I make public. Across the projects, I keep coming back to the same things: helping people learn, helping teams deliver, and making useful work together.

A sample from the workbench

What a photograph can tell us

A photograph can preserve a moment without settling every detail about it. While putting this timeline together, I kept the date of an event separate from the date I photographed its traces.

The TicketsNow notes are one example. They describe teaching from my time there, but I photographed the pages in 2021. Calling that a 2021 teaching event would change the story.

The Phalanx Duel notebook has a similar limit. Its photograph records the notebook and pen in July 2022. It does not establish the first day I started designing the game.

The gallery copies are smaller web images with embedded metadata removed. Their captions currently describe the event; individual photograph descriptions are still being developed.

This is the kind of work I can show in a Studio Note: a small decision, the evidence behind it, and what remains open.

An example Studio Note, prepared with AI assistance from this timeline and its curation record.

• See the TicketsNow notes and their date evidence
• See the Phalanx Duel notebook

Working together

Need help understanding a system?

For engineering work, start with a focused investigation of one important workflow. We agree the question, access, scope, timing, and fee before work begins.

See the workflow investigation and proposed outputs, or contact me about your team.

Engineering engagements are separate from Patreon membership.